Benefits to Staying Busy

Good grief... My bad for all the whining and moping I've done the last few incredibly slow months. Freelancing is feast or famine and I'm now neck-deep in multiple client projects.

That being said, I'm diggin' some of the benefits of staying busy while things were so slow. The creative treatments I'm writing now for client projects are better thanks to the the effort I put into my slow-season personal projects. In working those creative muscles on my own time, I feel somewhat more confident now that I'm putting client names and logos on them.

Writing has always been important to me and I'm intentional about being overly prepared and having a clear direction for projects. Still, I've never been overly confident in putting together a creative treatment. I'm like 90% certain there's a book or something out there on the topic that all the cool kids have read and I've somehow missed.

What I've somewhat put together about treatments comes from Google searches and a solid collection of "look-at-how-busy-I-am-writing-treatments" screenshots from various directors' Instagram Stories. I still remember seeing Spike Jonze's single-page treatment for Pharcyde's “Drop” video years ago. That and the Filmsupply fam had a solid post with Diego Contreras on creative treatments not too long ago.

I'm crazy thankful for the treatments I've found online and the friends who've shared theirs with me over the years. I still feel that writing a good treatment is like spotting a unicorn, but now it's like I know the Unicorn's name is Steve and somehow he's a couple people in front of me ordering at my regular coffee shop. If you need me, I'll be silently fanboying from my place in line and absolutely trying not to bother him – no promises though.